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Amnesty: Corruption and poverty rampant in Africa
Mail & Guardian (SA)
May 23, 2007

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=309254&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/

Widespread corruption continued to plague Africa in 2006, exacerbated by abject poverty that left a precarious human rights situation on the continent, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

"Weak, deeply impoverished and often profoundly corrupt states have created a power vacuum into which corporations and other economic actors are moving," said Irene Khan, the head of the London-based organisation, in the foreword of its annual report.

She said Africa -- long the victim of greedy Western governments and companies -- was facing a new challenge from China, whose had shown scant regard for its "human rights footprint" on the continent.

"Their deference to national sovereignty, antipathy to human rights in foreign policy and readiness to engage with abusive regimes are all endearing China to African governments," Khan said.

The report noted that the presence of oil and vast mineral resources in countries such as Angola, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan "continued to blight rather than enhance people's lives because of conflicts, corruption and power struggles".

Meanwhile the body -- while recognising armed conflicts were decreasing -- bemoaned the fact that at least a dozen countries were still affected, yielding millions of refugees and internally displaced people.

The African Union was said to have failed to promote human rights in errant member countries like Zimbabwe, showing a lack of political will that left millions at the mercy of belligerent governments.

"The AU continued to demonstrate a deep reluctance to publicly criticise African leaders who failed to protect human rights," it added, citing Zimbabwe's woes under president Robert Mugabe.

Hundreds of Zimbabweans have been arrested for engaging in peaceful protests while many whose homes were destroyed in Operation Murambatsvina (Restore Order) continue to suffer as a programme to build new homes faltered.

"By May [2006] one year after the programme's launch, only 3 325 houses have been built, compared with 92 460 housing structures destroyed in Operation Murambatsvina."

While abject poverty led to the problem of unregulated migration, forced evictions as a result of new development was "one of the most widespread and unrecognised human rights violations on the continent."

"More than three million people have been affected since 2000," said the report.

The report also criticised African states for suppressing dissent.

"Some governments authorised or condoned extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, torture ... or harassment of opposition political activists, human rights defenders and journalists," it said.

Aids was still a major threat, with 24,7-million infected on the continent, but national responses had been scaled up with more than a million receiving ARVs by June 2006, 23% of those needing it.

South Africa and Swaziland were singled out for wide-spread violence against women and girls, as was the continued practice of female genital mutilation in states like Sierra Leone.

Cameroon was fingered for convicting 13 people for practicing homosexuality, Equatorial Guinea for jailing government opponents, the Gambia for torturing detainees, Kenya for harassing journalists and Libya for the killing of demonstrators. -- Sapa-AFP

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